The Agate Hunter

By John Moehl

Growing up spitting distance from the crashing and churning Pacific Ocean, Eddie Hall finds he has quite the talent for spotting agates. As his love for combing his favorite beaches grows, his eye and knowledge of nature sharpen. Despite his love for the shore, he feels a pull to find his course through life. As with most, it is a question of taking the lead or getting pushed from behind. Eddie is truly not sure where he wants to lead himself. But, through luck and hard work, he finds his way as a surveyor and meets the woman of his dreams. The two, deeply committed to each other, join a common path that leads across the United States and through Europe and Africa.
But, as Eddie digs deeper into work, he finds himself entangled in dilemmas that his mind may try to ignore but that his heart can never forget. The more levels of corporate corruption Eddie uncovers, the more he realizes he must fight to make a difference. With the help of those close to him, Eddie uses his keen agate-hunting eyes to scan for any clues he can find to help bring the truth to the surface. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532657214

John Moehl

John Moehl was born in a sawmill town in eastern Oregon, but moved to the savannahs of Central Africa when he joined the Peace Corps in the early 1970s. For most of the following four decades, he lived and worked in Africa. Since his retirement from the United Nations in 2012, and his return to his native Oregon, he has devoted his time to writing about his experiences and the people he was fortunate enough to know.

Book preview

Prologue

It was an unusually warm day for October. Enjoying the warmth, he sat on a park bench on an outcropping above the pounding surf; the setting sun cast long shadows from his erect frame. He was still in pretty good shape, but old. He knew he was old.

He had seen so many sunsets, it was almost a metaphor. He had seen the sun slowly arch to the horizon then seemingly fall the last few feet into a boiling sea—thinking always he should be seeing the steam clouds from where he watched.

He once again waited for the steam cloud. It was his eyes that were cloudy with cataracts and age, but his mind was clear; sharp as the day he had left home to become a man—finding ultimately the need to return to stay a man.

It had been complicated. He guessed things always were.

Then the cell phone rang in the breast pocket of his Filson. He answered, knowing in doing so, he would completely change his life, his legacy.

Book One

The Beginning

He had been born in a small hamlet on the Pacific Coast. The tiny town of less than a hundred inhabitants was squeezed between the Coast Range and the thunderous Pacific Ocean—in the shadow of Cape Verde. It had been named by the Spanish explorer Bruno de Heceta y Dudagoitia in the late 1700 s, when he viewed the forested promontory from the pitching deck of the Santiago on his way north to Alaska.

The village was typical of the small communities that dotted the shoreline. There were basic local services for the citizenry—primary school, bus station, gas station, bar, restaurant, grocery store—in the village, but most jobs were outside in the larger port towns. One thirty miles to the north and the other twenty-five miles to the south, these ports encircled major rivers that drained the humid Coast Range into the awaiting sea. In the harbor townships, still small by any standard, there were jobs in the two major industries: fisheries and forestry. Fishers hooked, ensnarled, netted, and dug a variety of fare from the ocean’s larder, while the lumbermen felled trees—some of the Stika Spruce over 500 years old—cutting them into boards for the country’s booming housing market or shredding the trees into pulp for the fast-growing paper business.

He, his name was Edward (Eddie) Hall, had grown up on the rocky beaches and sandy shores of the Pacific—bouncing up and down the escarpments, in and out of the cold, crashing waves, like another piece of weathered and battered driftwood that littered the inlets and sloughs. He knew the sea’s song, orchestrated as breakers smashed into walls of stone. He knew the sea’s creatures, finding marvels beneath kelp, boulder, and pebble. He knew the awe and the calm inspired by the sea.

As soon as he was old enough to navigate the gullies and crags of the shoreline, he spent every free moment scouring the seaside for mementoes of its greatness with his ever-present companion, a golden retriever named Skip. He and Skip had a wondrous collection: glass floats broken free of far-off fishing nets; blennies and umbrella crabs pickled in formaldehyde in old mayonnaise jars; pieces of wood sculpted by the sea’s lathe to look like reindeer; buttons from some bygone seafarer; and, bottles and cans with unknown writing from unknown lands. But mostly, they had agates. Wherever they went in their beachcombing, Eddie kept his eyes peeled for agates—studiously hunting these prizes that, like the sea’s creatures, ultimately ended up in his mother’s old jam jars.

Uncle Wilfred had a machine that polished the sought-after stones to a high sheen. But, lacking such an apparatus, Eddie kept his collection immersed in tap water, enjoying the sparkle and luster through the walls of the jars aligned on shelves in his bedroom—row upon row of, what he thought, could have been gems.

He was very good at hunting agates. It was relatively simple to spy the translucent stones on a wet beach, awash by the waves. But, above the tide line, the quarry hid under a cloud, like scum on a pond. Regardless of this deception, assuming the appearance of an ordinary stone, the agates could not hide from his keen eye. He was very good at finding his prey and always returned home with his pockets brimming.

He went to grade school in the village, so his favored routine was only slightly altered by the need to attend classes—an obligation for which he had no affection, and to which he freely expressed his opposition. However, when he turned thirteen, there were major changes; unpleasant conditions which, again, he could not avoid. Skip died after a long life and many good times chasing sea gulls. Equally devastating, he now had to go to Woodrow Junior High, which was in the neighboring town, eight miles to the north. This required daily bus travel that made it impossible for him to follow his old routine on the beach.

As a thirteen-year-old with salt in his veins, Eddie felt very mature—ready to take on his life and call his own shots. He knew what he knew, and he knew a lot. Unfortunately, society had colluded against him—the sheriff even brought him home when he was truant. Against all his better impulses, he was forced to accept that school was to be the centerpiece of his life for the foreseeable future.

Eddie’s parents had their hands full. He was their first child and difficulties in his birth made it likely he would be their only child. And, often it seemed like one was too much.

They were even unsure what to call their son. They kept testing the options; the staid Edward, the almost too familiar Eddie, the alternative Eddy, or just plain Ed. Eddie himself thought of himself as Eddie, not by choice, but as was so often the case in his decision-making, by a process of elimination. Edward was far too formal—kings were named Edward. Ed was simply too short—it fell off the tongue. So, he thought of himself as Eddie (for undisclosed reasons preferring the ie to the y) but signed his name Edward. That worked.

Eddie’s father, Earl, worked in a sawmill in the port city to the south; his mother, Irene, waited tables in the village restaurant. They worked hard, very hard—but he never doubted they were his family.

Earl was a saw filer—one of the most important and best paid jobs in the mill. He was considered more as an artist than a worker; his task to keep the saw teeth as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel—and in many ways, just as important. Mills bought logs and sawed them into boards—the efficiency of the saw was one of the major factors contributing to how much wood was wasted and how much was sold. A machine honed the saw, one tooth at a time. But the saw filer ran the machine. He got no credit if all went well, and considerable blame when it did not.

Earl, it was said, had sawdust in his arteries. His father had worked in a sawmill in the south of the state, mostly as a millwright but doing a variety of tasks. Earl’s father’s father had also spent his life in a sawmill—only for him, the mill was in Arkansas, the family moving west after the first great war. Earl himself had started doing clean-up when he was fourteen and worked his way through the ranks, being fortunate enough to find himself under the wing of a master saw filer.

Mill work was demanding. Earl was up well before sunrise, even in summer. The mill was about five miles east of the port, so he had a sixty-mile round trip every day in his rather beat-up eight-year-old turquoise 1960 GMC pickup. Work was seven to three-thirty; in winter, he got home after dark, the coastal road twisting and turning—often frustratingly slow if he got caught behind a log truck or a tourist caravan.

Irene was always home when Eddie came back from school, the bus dropping him off at the foot of their long driveway. Her earnings from waitressing were an important supplement to their family income, but she worked with conditions. She would take the breakfast or lunch shifts, but not dinner—she insisted on being home for dinner—home for her boys.

Irene was a local girl—hardy, with a big dose of practical knowledge combined with impeccable logic. She had grown up twenty miles inland from the village, her father operating a small dairy and tree farm. She was accustomed to tough jobs and rough living. She had met Earl at the county fair. At that time, he was a new employee at the mill, living right next to the plant. They seemed to be kindred spirits from the moment they met. Their marriage looked to be inevitable—the only provision from Irene being that they live in the village—she would not go far from her roots.

After losing several pregnancies, they had had Eddie when Irene was nearly thirty-five. They adored their son. As he grew and turned into a bit of a beachcombing vagabond, it was difficult for them to be separated from their scion. They organized as many activities as possible to keep everyone together—some functional, others more recreational. They would hunt doves, deer, or blue grouse, fish for cutthroat or steelhead—sometimes going down to the freshwater lakes to catch bass. They would take their squaw nets into the surf for smelt and clamber over the rocky outcrops for mussels. They would follow logging roads far into the heart of the forest to cut firewood. At low tides, they would dig razor clams on the beaches and gapers in the bays. They would harvest blackberries and salmonberries in season. Outings were painted with a brush of mystery and adventure.

However, given their son’s nonstop, often seemingly reckless acts, in the back of their minds, Earl and Irene were always worried—more honestly scared—that Eddie would be the victim of some terrible tragedy. One day, when he was ten, when he did not come home on time from a jaunt on the beach with Skip, they were more than a little worried. If nothing else, Eddie was very punctual. After a few hours, Earl and Irene debated whether or not to call the sheriff. They did not want to give a bad reputation to a young boy—but they wanted their young boy home. The debate continued and after a delay of almost four hours, Eddie came to the back door—he and Skip soaked to the skin. They had been on the seaward side of a large basalt ridge that was separated from the main rocky outcropping by a canal—a canal they had been able to cross before high tide. Sadly, the tide peaked while they were still there. They were cut off until the tide turned. The ridge, their refuge, had been beaten by waves, but they managed to hold on and were happy to be home. That evening, Earl and Irene felt they should put a notch in the bedpost for one close encounter satisfactorily traversed. They knew it was just a matter of time until the next situation arose. They prayed it would finish in an equally positive way—in fact, they prayed all their son’s challenges would be met and overcome without leaving too many scars.

Eddie did not have many close friends. There were classmates with whom he had schooled since first grade, but the Hall home was about five miles south of the village with few neighbors—none with children. Nevertheless, he felt no void. To complement the often-busy lives laid-out by his parents, he found the realm of Neptune to be his closest ally—spending hours and hours immersed both spiritually and mentally in the seashore’s wonders.

To his frequent disappointment, inescapably, he had much less time to be on the beach in junior high and high school. Still and all, he managed to spend a lot of hours along the shore, missing Skip’s company, but still making new discoveries. His collection of treasures grew. More and more pickle and jam jars full of agates lined the shelves of his room.

When graduation came and went, he felt like someone on a dock, getting ready to step on the moored boat, only to see at the last minute the boat was gone. He was left hanging in space.

He had, at his parents’ insistence, applied to the state university. It was only eighty miles away—close enough not to be too intimidating. Everyone said the next step was college, so he guessed he might as well take it. But he was not sure the boat was there.

He had always been an above-average unenthusiastic student—his relatively good grades making it comparatively easy to get into college. Yet, he was unconvinced. Why keep going to school?

He tried to persuade his parents that, like many of his peers from the village, the best tactic would be to just get a job. They, however, neither having gone beyond secondary school, were adamant that he should at least try college to see how it was.

He argued it was too expensive and that it would be a real hardship for the family to pay all the fees. His parents partially agreed, but his dad had a solution for this too: Eddie would work in the mill during summer vacations to help pay for his studies—Earl had already cleared it with the office.

There appeared to be few options. Eddie packed his bags and his parents drove him to campus for freshman orientation. They agreed to come and get him for a respite at home by Halloween.

There was no major in agate hunting, so Eddie indicated his major as undeclared. He took boilerplate classes to fulfill requirements, as he had no specific area of interest that could be spelled-out in a college curriculum. Eddie meandered through classes like English Composition and Western Civilization; his keen eye, whetted by years on the beach seeking treasure, helped him take good notes and do well on exams. He continued to be an above-average unenthusiastic student.

His social life expanded with his academic life. His natural friendliness and winning smile made it easy to bond with the guys in the dorm. These guys, and his charisma, helped with finding a girl—or girls to be more correct. Eddie had had a girlfriend in high school, but it had been an on-and-off platonic affair that could not compete with the call of the seashore.

Now, the campus libertine spirit fostered a series of short and medium-term relationships that did a great deal to expand Eddie’s heretofore nonexistent understanding of the female of his species. He also found he had an innate talent in the campus’ chief intramural sport: drinking beer. After a kegger, it was not uncommon for him to find himself in an unknown rose garden or the dorm room of an almost unknown coed.

Nevertheless, good grades and an active social calendar were apparently not enough for him. He felt unfulfilled. He was where he was because of his parents’ insistence—not because he saw any real value in being there. This disquiet gnawed at him—and he was not even sure why he was distressed.

At the end of his freshman year, he went home and spent every day for the first fortnight walking along the beach, revisiting his favorite places, listening to the waves and the gulls—getting grounded. He then started working in the mill, pulling planer chain, going back and forth to work every day with his dad.

In the fall, he returned to campus, more tired from the nine-hour, six-day-a-week shifts than eager to see his college friends. He remained unenthusiastic while the school terms came and went, still doing well in all areas—but halfhearted, at best.

His sophomore year was nearly a carbon copy of its predecessor: taking dreary core courses while partying hard without really enjoying it. At the end of the year, before going back to the drudgery of the planer chain, he accepted an invitation from some dorm-mates to spend two weeks hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

The early summer alpine forest was splendid. There were patches of snow, high meadows in bloom, and a flurry of wildlife welcoming the warmer temperatures. Standing on the knife’s edge, seeing the verdant river valley on one side, and the bronze high plains on the other, was the most dazzling panorama Eddie had ever seen. It was the land. He realized, his epiphany—it was the land. Even on the beach, he was attracted to the land, he realized, not really the water. The rocky crevices, the basalt outcroppings, and the agate bejeweled coves—it was the land. He had been born in one of the most covetable landscapes on Earth. He should acknowledge his good luck, protect the oneness, and help this land stay pristine and unique.

When Eddie got home for the summer, he resumed his spot on the planer chain, but on some afternoons, before going home, he persuaded his dad to make a thirty-minute stop at the city library where he rushed in to check out some books. On subsequent stops, he would quickly return an arm-full and grab replacements.

Eddie had never been a big reader. He easily managed to read all that was required in his homework. But he did not see himself as the kind of guy who would revel in lying in a lawn chair and enjoying a good book. Nevertheless, he now had a mission. He needed to know things he did not know. The library was the logical—and practically the only—source of knowledge over the summer break.

Eddie broke new ground in another area: letter writing. He had always been a reluctant writer, having to be chided by his parents to write his grandmother a thank-you card for his birthday present or send his uncle and aunt a note after receiving a much-appreciated Christmas present. He used the phone. But now he chose pen and paper to contact his roommate Michael, who lived in Billings—over a thousand miles away.

The results of his handiwork were unveiled to his family after they had returned home from the village’s Fourth of July barbecue. With no fanfare and no advance notice, Eddie announced to his mother and father that he now knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a surveyor.

As he had learned in his readings, over two hundred years ago, Peter Jefferson had been a surveyor in western Virginia. His son had followed in his footsteps and then gone on to be President of the United States. So, if it was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, it was good enough for Eddie Hall.

Earl and Irene were relatively placid in view of this news. They realized their dear son was capable of far wilder antics and, after all, there was nothing wrong with being a surveyor—nothing at all.

Earl and Irene assumed this was just a matter of finally adjusting his major in college so that he would graduate with whatever was necessary to become a surveyor. Eddie informed them that, while this could be an option, it was not the path he had chosen. He understood that current trends were for people who wanted to become surveyors to do so by spending four years in college, learning all the theoretical bases—this was not for him. Fortunately, it was still possible to be an apprentice—becoming a licensed surveyor after four years of practical experience and after passing the licensing exams—this was the road for him. To wrap it all up, his roommate Michael had found him a slot on a survey team preparing for a major road renovation project on the road from Billings to Yellowstone Park. Wasn’t it wonderful?

Not really. Could have been worse. But Earl and Irene were not ecstatic. Thinking of their boy that far away—their boy! The same boy who fell out of the apple tree, drove his bike off a boat dock, and took his mattress outside to soften the fall when he jumped off the roof with a flour-sack parachute. This boy, alone in the wilds of Montana? It did not seem to be prudent, let alone easy, for parents who had never really been separated from their offspring by more than a few dozen miles.

Nonetheless, by any reckoning, Eddie was now a man—albeit a young, naive, impressionable, inexperienced man. His parents had never really been able to compel him to do something as a child, now was not the time to start. Thus, when others were regaining their college dorms after a long, hot summer, Eddie was off on a bus to Billings.

Book Two

Near the Little Bighorn

It was a long trip—the better part of two nights and three days. Upon arrival, it was not only a question of recovering from the long journey but adjusting to the elevation; Billings sat at over three thousand feet in altitude. This was no small leap for someone who had spent his life near sea-level.

Michael and Eddie only briefly crossed paths before Michael left on his way to start classes for fall quarter. They had barely forty-eight hours together, but this was enough for Michael to introduce his western visitor to his family—making sure they were on good terms before he retraced Eddie’s steps back to the Pacific Coast.

Michael’s father, Martin, was an engineer with the Montana Department of Transportation, working out of their Billings Maintenance Area Office. The Department was preparing to enlarge State Highway 308, fifteen miles joining the village of Belfry with the town of Red Lodge, known as the Gateway to Yellowstone Park.

The first step in the process was to survey the roadway. A contract had already been given to a Billings’ surveying company, Jim Klein and Associates. As luck would have it, Jim Klein had several ongoing projects and was short one assistant surveyor. Martin had been able to propose Eddie as the new hire.

Martin and his wife, June, welcomed their son’s ex-roommate—seeing him potentially as some sort of de facto stand-in while Michael was away at school. They even offered Eddie Michael’s room until he could get settled closer to the job site.

Accepting the unexpected hospitality, Eddie felt strange sharing Michael’s room with him for two nights until he left for his trek west. Still, it was a good chance to have some home cooking and to get to know the family—including two daughters, Samantha, a senior in high school, and Cheryl who was a freshman at the same school.

Michael’s family, Eddie, thought, looked like something out of the pages of Look Magazine. They were tanned, athletic, and attired in leisure-chic clothing. They chatted excitedly about water skiing in Cooney Reservoir and Big Horn Lake as well as snow skiing on Red Lodge Mountain. They recalled the positives of volunteering for the Red Cross. They complimented each other about being below par golfers and above par tennis players at the Yellowstone Country Club, where they shared the greens with pronghorn. They were simply a great family.

Eddie was indebted to them for opening a door for him to what he hoped would be a new segment of his life where he could be as enthusiastic and feel as rewarded as when he put on his rubber boots and plodded off to the beach to the hymn of the breakers.

Eddie was quickly folded into Jim Klein’s team. They were running against a deadline and needed to get the 308 job moving quickly. Late summer and fall in southern Montana were unpredictable seasons—it was difficult at best to know how long it would take them to cover the fifteen-mile-long job site. They hoped the field work could be completed in six weeks—but it was really anyone’s guess.

Eddie, as a tenderfoot, was assigned to the chief surveyor on the 308 job. With advice from his new colleagues, he decided, as he had no roots in the Treasure State, to rent a room in Red Lodge.

With an advance from an understanding boss, he first bought an orange 1952 Willys Jeep CJ-3A. He then took his maiden voyage in his new conveyance to Red Lodge where he found a room at the south end of town, on Edrick Avenue, at Stan Coolidge’s Cottages. He then drove the sixty-two miles back to Billings to get his stuff and say at least a temporary goodbye to Michael’s family.

Red Lodge offered all Eddie needed. By comparison to the small coastal communities to which he was accustomed, it was a big town—albeit, a town that only had about a third of the population it had had at its zenith in the late 1800s and early 1900s when its economy was primed by mining that attracted a cornucopia of immigrants from all over Europe. In the Depression, the mines closed. Bootleg whiskey reportedly replacing coal and gold. Then, in 1936, the Beartooth Highway to Yellowstone National Park came to town and tourism became the epicenter of the economy.

Truth be told, Eddie could almost have been living anywhere and been equally oblivious to his accommodation. Much to his great pleasure, he was basically out and in the field from sunrise to sunset. He was with the crew, traversing the 308—learning how to skillfully use transits, stadia and range rods, chains, and dumpy levels. He would get back to his room dead tired but satisfied.

He thanked his mother for teaching him how to make a variety of stews and casseroles. He would shop for groceries Saturday evening and cook on Sunday. Usually, a meal like a big pot of Tilly’s Irish Stew—one of Irene’s favorites—would become his evening repast for the coming week. He would have some fruit and cereal in the wee hours of the morning before climbing into his Jeep—top off, the cold dawn air pummeling his face, a brown bag with a few sandwiches, thrown together the night before, at his side.

He thanked Neptune for having honed his agate